I actually decided to get this kit for myself as I've been researching building my own desktop clock using 7-segment LED displays. When I stumbled upon this kit, I had to have it. So for now, I've put my design on the back-seat and settled on hacking this thing! Stay tuned for more...

I have been looking for a good quality notebook for some time now and finally decided I'd try this one. It's the Maker's Notebook found here. So far, I'm really impressed with it. Very good quality, lots of pages for ideas and the back even has some common IC pin outs, LED specs, etc. If you order it from the Maker's website you get some free stickers and the red elastic band to hold it closed, plus you are supporting a great community resource! I'm going to keep it close by and see if I can capture any of those fleeting ideas that seem to pop into my head at the most inopportune times. Without even using it for a few weeks, I can say I would definitely recommend this notebook for anyone seeking a handy way to keep their ideas organized. Thank you MAKE.

I am working on a larger projected and have decided the ArduinoATMEGA328 (which seem to be hard to find in stock online) would be the best choice for the project. Seeing as how the project is going to utilize 7-Segment multi-digit displays (common cathode), I knew I had to find a LED driver, no other realistic way to drive the displays. Anyhow, I picked up some LED drivers from one of my favorite companies, MAXIM. I chose the MAX7219 as it's well documented and works with the existing LED driver Arduino library. This prototype was to ensure I had everything working as I would have expected. In this prototype, I utilized a fixed Rset value. I'll use a trim pot in my other project (which I'll write up next weekend). If you have any questions on wiring up one of these LED drivers with Arduino, check this site out and this one.

For some time now, I've been educating myself on the basics of electrical engineering in a somewhat unorthodox manor, the internet! I've always been fascinated by the application of theory and creating tangible results from the wildest of concepts, so it was an obvious path to end up working with electronics.

Today it occurred to me that I have learned so much from the internet community of folks freely sharing their knowledge, that I needed to talk about the Creative Commons License. Knowledge should be free and it should be shared with anyone willing to take it! This is why I’m releasing all of my future work under the “Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License”. Quite a mouthful huh? Well, if you don’t already know what this license is, you need to read THIS. I strongly encourage everyone to follow in these footsteps and openly give away your knowledge! You can’t take it with you after all…

I finally got my order in from SparkFun.com this morning and couldn't wait to try my hand at building out my Arduino boards. I've talked about them before here. The challenge was the USB to Serial chip which is a SMD chip. With my new iron and some good quality solder wick, I was able to get them on the first time with little to no effort. The iron is a HUGE leap forward for me. I can't rave enough about how much I love it, granted I'm comparing it to my Radio Shack iron which is lovingly called a "fire starter" by most. Anyhow, built these boards and plugged them in to see if all was good, whatta ya know, right off the bat I was able to upload sketches to them both! I've got a few tweaks I'm going to make to this design tho, I"m going to add SMD leds for USB RX/TX activity and rearrange the boards just a bit. If you are wondering why on earth I'd have a vertical USB plug, it's because I plan on using these boards for another project and that's the orientation I wanted. You can easily switch the part out for the vertical one in Eagle. If you want the schematic or board files, they are attached to my previous post here. As for costs of these, I've got less than ~$15 US in each.